Yesterday, I forgot to write about the Yamaha exam I was supposed to take today. It seems that I have not wished my future self good luck. But anyway, I still received a compliment from the Chief Examiner this time, thanks to my Puppets' Dance (It was one of my grade 8 exam pieces). All parties were equally glad that this particular song was chosen......Whoa whoa whoa....let's take this from the very beginning.
My exam started at 4.40pm. It started raining elephants and hippoppotamuses (a self-made term of "cats and dogs") around 3.30 and I started panicking. OK, not exactly panicking THAT much because I actually planned to bring my Rubiks cube there (Yamaha Music School, PJ) to get my mind away from anything that has to do with piano. I was supposed to register myself at 4.10 but guess what? I went out of the house AT 4.10pm. The rain was just too heavy before that. It was LIKE some sort of typhoon, except that typhoons don't hit Malaysia. When we reached there, the flood was covering about half of Yamaha's gate. I had no idea how my mother drove through the flood, but she managed it. I got down first to register...by that time, I think I was roughly 10 minutes late...not even half as bad as my ABRSM grade 8, when I reached the exam 5 minutes before my actual exam because my mother lost her way in Shah Alam =X Anyway, when I registered, I saw a poor girl waiting outside the exam hall....I could tell she waited there for a long time already since she was a bit restless. My suspiscions were confirmed as a man in a black coat, whom I think was the examiner came out of a room and asked the registration lady, "How long has she been waiting?". Quite long, by my inaccurate calculations. Her exam proceded as usual when he asked her to go into the hall. After a while, the registrar gave me my Improvisation questions.
MY moment of truth.
I was led to go into Room 2 to read my Impro questions. The questions were okay as Impro A was in F major, 3/4 time (waltz). I also chose another 3/4 time motif for Impro B, which was in D major. After 10 minutes of reading, the registrar took me out again and told me to wait at the entrance of the hall. A chair was provided for the highly honoured candidate. If the chair was covered in silk, with a handrest and other majestic characteristics, I'm sure ALL the candidates would feel more relaxed. While waiting, I heard the girl before me play a grade 8 exam piece of year 2005-2006, a rather famous exam piece overloaded with consecutive arpeggios (Su Anne, Sher Hann and Zech played this song). After the song, there was a long pause, whereby the examiners would be commenting about the way we performed. It seemed like almost an eternity before the girl came out. She smiled at me....and while she was walking away, I heard an angry "Damn!".
A few million years later, a male examiner, whom I suspect is the Chief Examiner, called me in. I greeted the examiners with a gruffy "Good afternoon". I had no idea that phlegm had collected over the years of waiting outside the hall. There were 2 examiners, a Chinese man in black coat and an Indian lady in some purple clothes (Not being racist here, okay. Just getting into details for the sake of nostalgy). I proceded to the baby grand piano and sat there like the apocalypse was about to come. Moments later, I started off with Impro A. My gosh!! I could say that my left hand wasn't helping out....and for my 1st variation, I forgot to cross hands for my B section. Whatever, I just went on, praying like mad in my head. For the 2nd variation, I screwed up part of my B section again.
Then, there was Impro B, which I screwed up the B section AGAIN. For a moment, I was basically lost that I forgot my chord IV (4) was suppose to come in. I also screwed the ending of B section, when I was supposed to play the double dominant of D major, which was chord E7, also known as dominant 7th of A major. Then, I missed out my best part, where I wanted to do a passing line down, from chord I, to chord I7, to chord IV and iv (minor) leading to chord Ic, V7 and I. I missed my most prominent idea!!!
Next up was Sight reading. It was actually alright to me. Screwed some parts but I just hope the examiners won't notice.....it didn't really sound that wrong to me.
Then, some interruption occurred. There was this arcane dripping sound from part of the roof of the hall. As I was waiting to hear which piece I would play, I turned and saw both examiners staring in amazement at the ceiling (Ok, this is a very comical moment).
*Turns to me and laugh*
"Okay....that is a very funny sound....."
"I think it's leaking..."
"OK...anyway....let's not bother about the sound and get on with the exam"
"OK, let's hear 'Whisper of Spring'". Darn the baby grand!! Since the book stand couldn't hold so many pages, I had to keep my first page of the song, which ultimately caused me to screw up even the FIRST PAGE. Bad impression. Ms Susan said that examiners watch out for the beginning and ending of a song. My beginning was crap and my examiner stopped me halfway through the song because it was too long.
There was a short pause before he asked me, "For your Sonata in C minor....what movement are you playing?"
"1st movement"
"OK"
*Pauses for a moment*
*The guy examiner points his pen/pencil to a song and the other examiner nods her head, smiling*
#Please, choose the Puppet song......#
"Alright, we want to hear The Puppets' Dance"
#Hallelujah!!!!!!!#
I started off as usual, taking a breath before starting, hoping for the best. I did, I would say, better than usual. There was still that slip I always made in the E-major-change-of-key section but it wasn't so obvious (it never is when performing). It was quite a funny performance too, seeing that the baby grand piano's keyboard slides to the right when the una corda (soft pedal) is pressed. I used the soft pedal for my beginning and bits here and there in the piece. It was a challenge itself in reaching any note correctly after releasing the soft pedal as it would slide left.
When I ended:
*Turns to the guy examiner*"You could really feel like puppets are dancing right?"
"Yes, you could really feel the music".
After the piece, I was called over to review my exam.
"I would say I am very glad we chose this piece as it really showed the other side of you. I should say, you ARE a performer. You really played it all out...you really felt the puppets' dance".
*Turns to the chief examiner*"How big do you think the puppet is?"*Chuckles*
"Quite big". *Turns to me* "No, really, how big IS your puppet?"
"Gigantic" *Grins* (No kidding, I really said that)
"Yes, it was gigantic".
[No further elaborations, nothing else interesting.....except the fact that he didn't say anything about my mistakes =D]
[*Takes my Whisper of Spring paper*]
"How do you think you did with this piece compared to your Puppets' Dance?"
"Not as good....?"
"Yes....have you been practicing like how you did for Puppets' Dance?"
"Not exactly..."
"Yes. There were a few slips here and there.....but you should try to feel and move more like what you did for the Puppets' Dance"
"Oh okay"
[You get the point....it stank...]
"Now, your sight reading. Everything was fine except that you should observe the dynamics markings more.There were altogether 7 dynamics markings here. Also be careful of accidental notes....like this bar here, you missed out this accidental note. It's the same bar, so the accidental still remains". (Darn!! I didn't get away with that it-sounded-right mistake!!!).
"Your Impro B.....now, let me ask you.....why did you choose this question. Do you like D major?"
"Erm....I felt more comfortable and free in this question" (I think he asked that because nobody else chose that question...)
"Hmm...3/4 time. The Puppets' Dance....is it 3/4 time too?"
[*Flips through my book*]
"Yes, it's 3/4 time...."
"OK, OK. I should say that you paused a little before the barline....probably thinking, "Where should I go?"........how did you think you did for this? Was it the way you wanted it to be?"
"No..."
"I knew it. Your left hand was a bit of a hindrance to you as it did not exactly know where to go. I know there's so much music in your head, but your hands just didn't obey you"
"Yea....true..."
"You should play this like a song....just like how you played The Puppets' Dance"
"Yes....okay"
"For your Impro A, there were a bit of slips here and there but it is understandable as this is your first time. For your first variation....it was quite a good start actually, but you added an extra count/beat in bar 7...."
#Thank God he didn't mention about the 'no-change-in-ideas' for the B section#
"Your second variation was very nice. We liked your B section where you did a rather complicated idea..(I did triplets). We were both like, "Come on, you can do it...you can do it...but you lost the momentum in bar 11. (3rd line, 3rd bar). There was a bit of hesitation there..."
"Overall, I think you should work more on your left hand.....Keep up your good showmanship"
"OK"
"You can go now"
"Thank you"
[*Takes stuff and leaves the hall*]
A few metres from the door, the examiner turns back and shouts: "Remember, keep up your showmanship skills!"
As you can see from the above.....there was a lot of connection with The Puppets' Dance. Therefore, now, I would like to have give credits to those around me....:
[Puppets Dance was actually my ABRSM song. My best one actually. I got a 29/30 for this song. It's very violatile, crazy and there's a lot of banging involved. I hereby pay my respects to all my neighbours (no, they're not dead....) for enduring the hardship of going through noisy, sleepless nights while controlling the urge to report mental abuse and source of noise pollution to the police due to my practicing at night =X I would also like to thank my parents for giving me a chance to practice...(Seriously.....everytime I practice this song, my parents off the TV and go up and sleep early....) It's just such a noisy song that they don't even think I'm practicing....they think I'm just simply banging the piano to my own liking]
*Note: The Puppets' Dance is an extremely violent song. Do not listen to it without parental guidance.
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Summary only...
I went for violin class in the morning. After that, I ate an early lunch and got ready for Melissa to pick me up to KLPac. Squeezing in the car too were Jhia Yim, Yi Jing and Chi Yi. Coincidentially, all of us were wearing pink shirts. The outstanding one was Yi Jing, who wore a maroon shirt--which was still counted as DARK pink. Luckily, the traffic was smooth all the way so we reached there pretty early (half-an-hour, if I'm not mistaken). We weren't the first there anyway....we thought we were....When we were inside that KL something-like-recreational-park, we saw some weird buildings like a Malay longhouse and 2 interesting buildings (see left). On the right is the picture 
of the building through an entrance. It was still early anyway, so we fed the fish near some koi farm and KLPac. Chi Yi got mad with the fish.....it was a real feeding frenzy.We went to the Koi rearing farm just opposite KLPac. The fish there were humongous!!! One fish could grow up to more than approximately 60 centimetres long and probably more than 15 cm width (fat). Not only that....these were highly expensive fish. Kill one and it'll cost you more than RM20,000. It doesn't really look that big in the pictures I've taken but who cares...? You get the point. It's 
big...unless you've seen something bigger (Okay, I have. The biggest harmless fish I saw was in Langkawi--waaay back in Standard 1, when it could have gobbled me up easily. It was some oversized Arowana fish--it was metres long). Then there are sharks, whale sharks, bluefin tunas and loads of other fish......BACK to CHORAL FEST. After amusing ourselves with the fishes, we walked over to KLPac. There was some Japanese tinge in it to me....somehow. I thought it would be some grand building which would look like Istana Budaya. Instead, a humble building full of history stood before us. It kind of 
reminded me of a green house. Most of its walls were made out of glass-- and it was beautiful, actually. Now that you have been amused by some of the pictures here, I shall continue my story....after waiting for a long time, we finally registered (Well, we couldn't register earlier because Pn Cecilia wasn't there yet). So, we did alot of crappy things like taking pictures of stupid things. The picture of the stairs below (Looong way down) makes me giddy after a while. After we registered, we had to take a green file each. Inside the file were our song scores. These included Sicut Cervus, Bogoritse Devo, Lo Lo Re Babu, Down By the Riverside
when they wear the shirt. Anyway, Yi Jing got a red tag at first, but she had decided to change her tag to green when she gets back home. About 3 something, we were herded to go to the great hall, also known as Pentas 1. The whole place looked like my Rubik's Cube. It was so colourful. *Pause*. I can see that my words and descriptions are too long-winded and have already gone to the future....Enjoy yourself all you can as the next few scrolls you make will have no (I mean 'little', to be precise). 
Next day, Yi Jing's father sent us there. The feeling of leaving Choral Fest was beginning to sink in.
At night, there was a question and answer session. Someone asked Professor Andre de Quadros to stand on his head. He DID manage to do it.....then, he also said he had 4 passports (1 French....or was it Portugese...[?], 1 American, 1 Australian and 1 Indian). Still trying to get a clear photo of him standing on his head......
